Word: sverdrup
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Said General MacArthur's tall, lean, sandy-mustached chief engineer, Brigadier General Leif John ("Jack") Sverdrup: "It's marvelous country to raise rice, but damn poor country to raise airfields." Sverdrup had once built an airfield on New Guinea in six days, five hours, 10 minutes. That was impossible on Leyte. But his ingenious engineers cut corners where they could. One airstrip was complete except for 120 feet, under water. They got a plane to race its props and blow off the water, dried the ground with a flamethrower, then hastily put down a hard surface...
Sink or Swim. In the viscous gumbo, fighting was reduced to patrol actions. Off Leyte's western shore, Japanese reinforcement convoys appeared and were attacked by fighter bombers from Sverdrup's new strips. Some were burned and some were sunk. Thousands of Japanese troops on their way to reinforce the stubborn, holdout garrison at Ormoc died. How many thousands, no man knew, although the communiqués offered guesstimates in bold round numbers...